Review: The Scoundrel Takes a Bride by Stefanie Sloane

This is a review of the Scoundrel Takes a Bride by Stephanie Sloane. My book reading has been hit or miss lately. I'll read a good book and then I'll read a book that's not so good and then I have to review them both. I feel bad that not all my reviews can be positive and upbeat but I try to highlight the good points of each book that I do read. Fortunately for me, and you, I thought that this was a pretty good book. The Scoundrel Takes a Bride is unique to me because I don't read a lot of mystery romance novels so this book was different in that way. I really liked the heroine in this book. She breaks the normal heroine role by being part of the team that helps solve the murder mystery of her mother. She doesn't step aside and let the men do the job. Instead she is a budding criminal psychologist. 

She has worked with the Bow Street runners and has become a criminal psychologist by working on cases, reading personal interviews, books by authorities in the field at that time and interviewing criminals and the people who hunt them down. She is quite skilled. In fact she does a better job of interrogating the criminal in the book than the men do. She is reminiscent of a regency era "Brenda Lee." She is strong but not willful. She is very caring and loving of the family that she has created after her mother was murdered when she was very young. She's made a family out of her staff and the boys that were her neighbors. Growing up she knows that she is intended to marry the eldest child, Langdon Bourne, the Earl of Stonecliffe, but she has fallen for the second son Nicholas. Nicholas is definitely a tortured hero. We find him at the beginning of the book so drunk that he misses his best friends wedding. It's not that Nicholas doesn't care for Lady Sophia. It's quite the opposite. He's always loved her but knows that he can't have her because she is betrothed to his brother. I like the fact that Sephia takes Nicholas as a project and basically decides to slap him out of the funk that he's been living in the last couple of years. 

The secondary characters in this book almost steal the show. If you like books with street wise children, there is a young ruffian named mouse and Nicholas literally runs into him in a dark alley. Thugs are chasing him down and Nicholas recognizes him as an informant that he's paid before and he saves Mouse's life. There is also Pavan Singh. Oh what a hilarious character. He's sort of an Indian holy man that provides all the comic relief. He comes in and out of the picture at various times in the story doing odd things like incapacitating two thugs but simply touching their inner thighs. He astounds everyone arounds him but he is a pure and simple man who happens to want a better life for Nicholas. Their conversations are hilarious. He redesigns Nicholas' entire house, rearranges his staff, and hires a new cook so that she can learn to cook curry. It is a family dynamic of an Indian holy man, a street-wise child and a battle weary gentlemen that you don't see in most romantic novels. 

As Nicholas slowly gets his life together he realizes his love not only for Sophia but also the extended family that he's created with Singh and Mouse. There is so much to like in this book from the minor characters to the major players there's always something going on. It's rarely boring with all the twists and turns as the investigation gets closer and closer to the end. I will say that the murder mystery is not wrapped up in a nice, neat little package, just in case those things bother you. I can't wait for Book 2 which is Langdon's story.

Scoundrel Takes a Bride: 6 out of 10